City councils and property management companies are faced with an increasing need to provide and manage multiple services to residents, visitors, and users of the areas under their control. Such services include:                Communication such as Internet and phone connectivity        Security such as surveillance systems and alarms        Emergency services        Gathering of environmental data        Mobile payment and purchase        Information such as maps, timetables, guides, and also advertising        Traffic and crowd management        Lighting        
Today, most of these functions and services are provided as separate systems each with their own management, communication, and deployment methods. For example, surveillance cameras and sensors for gathering environmental data will be placed on different support structures and each will have a separate communication path back to a separate data gathering and management system. An emergency situation detected by these cameras will require the manual activation of an entirely separate announcement system.
The lack of integration of such services also leads to lost opportunities for revenue such as tailoring advertising on digital billboards based on the audience surrounding those boards. Additionally displays used for advertising cannot be repurposed for user interaction, announcements, or crowd management. A further disadvantage is the greater power requirements of multiple separate systems. An integrated system could also enable opportunities for vendors to offer services that include advertising as well as purchase and delivery. Finally, while some information services are available in kiosks of limited functionality, there is no ability to transfer data or generally interact with mobile devices thus limiting the services provided to a specific place.
Further, communication services do not provide data about user location that could be used for interactive applications. While interactive location based applications on user mobile devices have been proposed for many years, these are generally based on GPS and related technologies which often suffer from coverage gaps and inaccuracy—especially indoors. This in turn gives rise to user apprehension in using such applications (which also tend to drain the device battery). There is generally no provision for a position sensing technology that is visibly present near the physical area of interest. Having a physical presence would have the advantage that users could see and interact with the sensing device, which in turn could provide more accurate confirmation of user location. While users may not be aware of the technology, it would be easier for them to accept real-time changes to proximity sensitive interactive applications on their mobile devices.
Another aspect of urban services is lighting. Different types of lighting may be found in urban areas including street lighting, functional lighting or emergency lighting. Today there is no mechanism to control all the available forms of lighting as a coherent system providing more than the sum of its parts. For example, it would be useful to be able to adopt uniform lighting colors (where supported by the infrastructure) for purposes of messaging or advertising, or reduce the intensity of lighting, when full intensity is not required, to save power.
It would therefore be advantageous to combine the many functions and services required by city councils and property management companies with capabilities of user interaction into one homogenous system. It would be further desirable to provide embodiment of these services in a visible platform deployable throughout the managed area.